This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Southern expat redesigns Mississippi State flag. Hey, what's up? Welcome to Throwback Thursday. Welcome to Side Hustle School. In this weekly segment, we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
I love putting these episodes together for you. I hope you enjoy them as well. I hope you find them helpful, interesting, entertaining at times, and also inspiring. The whole point of these stories and all the different case studies and questions and everything we do here at Side Hustle School is designed to help you take action on an idea of your own. Make extra money, create more security, create more options for yourself.
That's what it's about. Now, last week in this segment, we heard from Kyla Gardner, originally from Chicago, but now living with her partner in Melbourne, Australia. She has created passive income from a series of self-published nonfiction books. And today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Michael Whitson. He's the founder of a business that sells letterpress wall art for homes.
And last year, as I mentioned here in the title of the episode, last year he got the chance to redesign part of the Mississippi State flag. It's a very cool story. I don't want to give away the details. He's going to tell us more about that experience as well as what his current challenge is here in this update. So over to Micah.
I'll come back at the end with a brief wrap up. [Music]
- Hi, my name is Micah Whitson and I live in Boston. My side hustle is making letterpress and gee clay wall art. And I was previously featured on episode 649. I got started.
I was missing home and I wanted to make something that reflected my roots as a Southerner. I am from Alabama, went to college in Mississippi, lived in Georgia, in North Carolina, and wanted to have some stuff that kind of marked our journey. At the time I couldn't find anything other than like a college football painting. I am after all from Alabama and they do have a football team there. So I figured, hey, I'm a designer.
Why not design prints and get a local letterpress printer with great type to typeset them. So since I was last featured on the show, Mississippi, the state of Mississippi got a new flag and I am one of the people who helped design it. And I'll explain a little of that story. So back in June of 2020, the flag came down, which was long overdue. There was a Confederate emblem in the flag.
It always raised eyebrows. When I went to college in Mississippi, I was really surprised that that was their flag. But as a lot of things that are kind of entrenched in society and when dealing with folks who just feel disenfranchised, it's hard to change something. So the flag came down and that was great. But my audience, people who knew that I was a Southerner that was a designer and also had ties to Mississippi, folks started asking if I was going to submit a design for them to replace it.
The state had opened up a call for submissions to submit. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna go for it, why not? So I, over the course of a few days, put together a flag. So got a lot of people excited about it and started getting some coverage.
And over the course of three or four weeks, it came down to two last flags standing. There was my flag, the Great River flag, and then there was a flag that was a mashup of five different designers elements all put together. So came down to the last day and the commission decided to put the other flag, which was called the In God We Trust flag. They moved forward with it, put that on the ballot, and it was voted in successfully in the elections last year. So it became the official flag in Mississippi.
So really cool that that was the outcome. And that's what I've been up to since the last time we spoke. The biggest challenge that we're currently facing is last year was a banner year for us. We did well in business. Everyone started working from home because of the pandemic and we make wall art.
And a lot of people got home and realized that office that they hadn't ever really decorated, they were spending a lot more time there. Some of them had some federal stimulus dollars. And so we had a busy year between work from home purchases and also the interest of the flag drummed up. And so that's the biggest challenge is you have your ups and then you got your downs. This year is a little bit, a little quieter.
It's not as busy as it was. There's not as much hype. And so that's the challenge is getting inspired for what's the next big thing, the next meaningful and exciting project we can work on. I would say the advice that I would give to someone who wants to follow in our footsteps is consistency is important. I had to keep at Goldtry for 10 years and just continue to bang the same drum.
Consistency, volume, and doing that allowed us to have a good stab at the flag. People knew that we represented Mississippi well and it wanted, and we're encouraging us to throw our designs in for the flag. And that was only made possible by going week after week, year after year, into the basement to work on designs, to represent places that we hold dear. And that got us a seat at the table. So my advice would be keep at it.
You never know when your opportunity is going to show up. And next for our side hustle. Well, because of the Mississippi work, I am on a commission for the state of Massachusetts. We are looking at the symbols on our seal and our motto, which are featured on the state flag and looking at those and how well they represent us in Massachusetts as well. So working on that and probably we'll also do some design work at the same time.
[Music]
Thank you so much, Micah. I really appreciate you sharing those updates with our listeners and listeners. Check out his website at theoldtry.com. So that's like the old try, like the old college try, theoldty.com. You can also follow the business on most social networks at the old try.
Also, if you'd like to see the new Mississippi state flag, well, you could just Google it, but specifically look on Wikipedia. You can see all kinds of facts about it, learn more about the process. You can also see Micah Whitson, credited as one of those five designers. Pretty cool, right? So congratulations, Micah, on that experience.
Listeners, hope you enjoyed it. This was one of our most popular new features of 2020. Here we are almost at the end of 2021, continuing to bring you updates from our archives of more than a thousand stories. So if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, if you've got something you want to share, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today.
I hope you'll come back tomorrow, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
